What a good book! I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo after a recommendation first from my high school English teacher and then from Sayers, who actually lent me the book. It is the first time since I Capture the Castle that I stayed up all night (okay, it was just half the night this time) reading--well, reading for fun.
I like mystery novels a lot (although my experience of them is quite limited--Dorothy Sayers, Charles Williams, P.D. James). This one was a combination mystery novel/reflection on the abuse of women (and, as a result, as Sayers put it, has some weird sex-stuff; the translation of the original Swedish title is, "Men who Hate Women"). Occasionally the novel got a bit pedantic--Larsson was best when he was describing the psychology of abuse in the character Lisbeth Salander, and less good when the authorial voice stepped back from the story and gave its own commentary. The novel's ability to make you understand the psychology of abuse is remarkable; additionally, this novel is a crime novel where following the law is not by any means the highest virtue (which is, I think, an interesting twist on detective novels). The highest virtue is treating women (and people) well. Sometimes this lines up with the law; other times it doesn't.
I have read so so few contemporary writers that I found the amount of technology in this one surprising--it sometimes read like an advertisement for macs.
The novel is fairly allusive--I couldn't pick up on most of it as I haven't read that many crime novels, but he mentions Dorothy Sayers, among many others (I'm sure it's a coincidence, but I found it strange that the name of one of the main characters in this novel, "Harriet Vanger" is quite similar to the "Harriet Vane" in Sayers' Gaudy Night). He is also self-conscious about following in the detective novel tradition of setting a crime in a closed situation on an island.
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